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Is The Prostate Cancer Biopsy An Effective Diagnostic Tool?

Articles » Disease-&-Illness » Prostate-Cancer >> View Article

Is The Prostate Cancer Biopsy An Effective Diagnostic Tool?

By: Donald Saunders

Although there are various tests which can be performed when the presence of prostate cancer is suspected, the one certain way to diagnose the condition is the prostate biopsy. But precisely how successful is the biopsy when it comes to detecting this disease?

In the United States alone every year there are about 1,000,000 prostate biopsies undertaken of which approximately 25 percent indicate the presence of prostate cancer. Of the other 75 percent of prostate biopsies however some one-third show false negative results. This means that roughly a quarter of all men being given a prostate biopsy are being cleared by their biopsy, despite the fact that they have prostate cancer.

On the surface therefore it may appear that the prostate biopsy is not a very effective test but these results do not mean that there is anything wrong with the prostate biopsy procedure as a means of confirming the presence of prostate cancer. However, what is does show is that there is a need to detect those patients who, in spite of returning a negative result, are nonetheless at considerable risk from prostate cancer and ought therefore to undergo a follow-up biopsy.

The problem is that until very recently there has not been an easy way of determining patients at risk. However, a study of more than five hundred individuals being investigated for the presence of prostate cancer might now provide an answer.

All of the patients investigated in the study had previously received a negative prostate biopsy result but researchers discovered that when they looked at the patient's prostate specific antigen (PSA) test results and these were adjusted to take account of the size of the prostate gland they could identify those patients who were more likely to return positive results on a follow-up biopsy.

The researchers also found that patients who had a Gleeson score of 7 or more were at greater risk from life-threatening prostate cancer and were again more likely to receive a positive result on a further biopsy. The Gleeson score is measured on a scale between 2 and 10 and the score is calculated from a laboratory investigation of prostate biopsy tissue. Low scores indicate a cancer with a relatively small risk of spread and high scores indicate a cancer which is far more likely to spread.

There are various prostate biopsy procedures in use now but possibly the most often used procedure is the core needle biopsy. Here several very small tissue samples are taken from different sections of the prostrate gland using a biopsy gun which shoots a needle into the selected area to remove the sample within just a fraction of a second. The samples collected are then sent off for laboratory analysis to reveal whether cancer is present and, if so, to estimate precisely how much of the prostate gland is affected.

The prostate biopsy is an expensive procedure and is a test which can be relatively nerve-racking for the patient. It is sometimes also a quite painful procedure which can involve bleeding and the risk of infection. As a result it is in everyone's interest to pinpoint those individuals for whom a follow-up biopsy is advisable and to reduce as far as we can the number of avoidable follow-up biopsies being undertaken each year.

ProstateProblemCenter.com provides information on everything from the prostate biopsy to the therapeutic use of milking the prostate gland

Article Source: www.find-an-article.com/index.php?page=author&author_name=Donald Saunders

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